By Brendan O’Brien and Liya Cui
(Reuters) -Hurricane Ernesto on Thursday barreled toward Bermuda where it promised to produce a dangerous storm surge and heavy rains after leaving hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans without power in its wake.
The Category 1 hurricane was 570 miles (915 km) southwest of Bermuda as it headed north, packing winds of 85 miles an hour at daybreak on Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
Bermuda was under a hurricane warning as forecasters predicted Ernesto would approach the British territory late on Friday. By Saturday, Ernesto will be a large hurricane near the island where it will produce prolonged strong winds, flash flooding and a dangerous storm surge, the center said.
“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the hurricane center said.
Ernesto became a hurricane on Wednesday, thrashing Puerto Rico with heavy rains and fierce winds. Images and video footage from the island showed flood waters covering roadways, downed powerlines and destroyed homes and vehicles.
As of midday on Thursday, some 410,000 homes and businesses – about a quarter of all customers on the U.S. territory – remained without electricity, according to LUMA Energy, the Caribbean island’s main power supplier. Around half of Puerto Rico’s customers were without power on Wednesday.
Vanessa Toro, a San Juan resident who lost electricity at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, said she was frustrated that she is still without power even though the storm had little impact on her area.
“If the event had been of a large magnitude one understands the situation a little more, but this storm was not catastrophic,” she said. “Then LUMA says it is prepared to deal with these situations, but we are without power 29 hours after the storm.”
LUMA chief executive Juan Saca said in a radio interview Thursday morning that he expected to restore power to many customers later on Thursday.
Ernesto was expected to stay well west of the U.S. East Coast as it traveled north. However, the storm was forecast to produce life-threatening surf and rip currents across the region, the center said.
Ernesto is the fifth named Atlantic storm of what is expected to be an intense hurricane season. Slow-moving Debby hit Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane just last week before soaking some parts of the Carolinas with up to 2 feet (60 cm) of rain.
Hurricane Beryl, the first of the season, was the earliest Category 5 storm on record in the Atlantic when it swept through the Caribbean and the Texas Gulf Coast last month, killing dozens of people and costing an estimated $6 billion in damages.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Liya Cui in New York, Editing by Franklin Paul and Deepa Babington)
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